


Shake This Land

by ssstrychnine



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: F/F, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Underage, Mostly Gen, building from rubble creating something new, cheedo the everything, cheedo the fierce, cheedo the speed demon, cheedo the vuvalini, immediately post movie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-26
Updated: 2015-07-30
Packaged: 2018-04-11 10:26:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,486
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4431734
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ssstrychnine/pseuds/ssstrychnine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What Cheedo does next.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The first thing Cheedo does, when they go back to the Citadel, is save the life of a man she hates. It had been Corpus Collosus who picked Angharad for Joe’s wife, she knows this, Corpus Collosus with his telescope, peeping out whole, pretty girls. Angharad had told them all, staring into the fire, her arms wrapped around her knees. But Angharad had also said _no unnecessary killing_ , and Cheedo cries out for his mercy when the Wretched try to throw him from the cliffs. He looks at her, with his eyes bulging, and his breath coming sharp, and fast, and she gives him his life, and turns her back on him. She files him away somewhere, a resource that is not yet useful, and she leaves him.

There is a Wretched leader named Tuck, and he walks with Cheedo through the Citadel. She is dressed in her white still, and Dag is trailing behind them, clutching the seed bag to her chest. Toast had disappeared as soon as the lift hit it’s top, and Capable had taken Furiosa and the other Vuvalini to Organic’s stitch shop. Cheedo’s palms are sweating, and she is dirty, and tired, and sore with grief, but she walks with Tuck through the halls. 

“You’re who we’ll deal with,” Tuck says. “You showed mercy.”

“ _You_ didn’t,” snaps Cheedo, and then she bites her lip, and looks away. “I don’t want to deal with anyone. You can have the water, and the green, just don’t kill anyone.” 

“Impossible.” 

“No _unnecessary_ killing,” Cheedo murmurs, words from a dream, and she brushes her wrist across her eyes, hiding the tears she’s blinking away. “You need the water.” 

“We need a reservoir to hold it.” 

“Talk to Toast, she used to build things,” she says, not mentioning that Toast built dollhouses out of the covers of books, miniature cities on the water. “Maybe the Vuvalini will help, and Furiosa when she’s better.”

“And who are you?” 

“Cheedo,” she says, and there are still words on her tongue, waiting to be spoken. _The Fragile_. She swallows them, and turns to him. “I...I know this place.” 

Dag reaches them, and stops next to Cheedo, rests her cheek on her hair. Cheedo lets out a breath, tries to smile at Tuck who is the voice of the Wretched, tries to look confident in herself, and in the Citadel, and in everything new that might come from this. These knifeblade heights. It will all be better when Furiosa is healed, she thinks.

“We need to build,” says Tuck. “We live from our backs. We need to stop building on our bodies, and build on stone.” 

“Take whatever you want from here,” Cheedo says, dragging her toes through the dust on the ground. She wants to ask him why he’s telling her this, like she has authority, like she can tell him what to do. She wants to scream. “Build something. Talk to Corpus Collosus, he knows more than anyone in the world about the Citadel, make him earn his life.” 

Tuck looks at her for a long moment, his eyes are red-rimmed and hard and yellow. Then he nods, and turns away, and heads back the way they came. Cheedo sighs, and curls her fingers into Dag’s palm, and when she turns around she realises they’ve come to the vault. The path she knows best. They both stare at it, in silence. Dag’s hand is cold, and Cheedo’s is wet with sweat, and she doesn’t know where her trembling starts, and Dag’s begins. 

“I’ll turn it to green and steam,” Dag murmurs. “A seed room. A green place.” 

“For Angharad,” Cheedo whispers.

“For you, and for Angharad, and Capable, and Toast.” 

“And Dag,” Cheedo says, gently insistent. 

They go into the Vault, and Cheedo counts their old footprints, left behind in dust, like fossils. Different girls made these marks. Angharad’s painted words are still there, and Cheedo makes a silent vow to keep it that way. She will paint them herself, even when the vault is a green place. 

Dag sits on the edge of the pool, dips her feet in the water, and Cheedo sits next to her. This place is familiar in a way that the larger Citadel isn’t. It’s almost comforting, though she knows it shouldn’t be. This is a place of violence, and theft. Cheedo leans over her knees to put her hands in the water, and she washes them clean. There is blood under her nails, from Joe maybe, or Furiosa, or Max, or Toast. She digs it out and washes it away. 

“Were you frightened? Stepping up for Furiosa.” 

“Yes,” Cheedo says, hugging her knees. “I was scared of leaving you behind too.” 

“I followed you.”

Cheedo leans her head on Dag’s shoulder, and they sit in the water, and make ripples with their fingers and toes. She wonders what the Wretched are doing. Carving hollows into the walls, or building towers out of twigs. Maybe Tuck is talking to Toast, or Corpus, and they are thinking of ways to hold water. Maybe Corpus is dead already. Maybe they will be next, brides in white, princesses in a tower. The lucky ones. Cheedo bites the inside of her cheek until the thoughts stop. 

“When Furiosa is better, we can start again,” she says.

“Like a seedling,” Dag agrees, making everything okay, like she always does.

Furiosa is stitched up and drugged down. She gets through a week of fevered sleep, and then she gets up, and is something close to herself. Cheedo visits her in the sick bay, brings her potato bread, and green things, and water. She tells her about Corpus, and Furiosa says nothing. She tells her about the plans for the reservoir, and Furiosa says nothing. She tells her about the garden boxes Dag has built in the vault, and Furiosa smiles. 

The War Boys come back, the ones from the pursuit. The ones who could pull themselves from the wreckage, and survive the trek around the mountains, and come back. Capable pretends she is not looking for Nux among them, and then retreats to the nursery where she’s been spending most of her time. War Pups and Wretched babies. 

They are hostile at first. They are bristling with fear, and anger, and their ribs push against their skin so hard it looks set to split. They are kept in a room, locked in with car doors. But Capable comes back, and she gentles them like she gentled Nux, and she tells them stories, and truths. The anger goes out of them, though the fear remains. 

“You are not things,” she tells them, and they blink like baby birds seeing their first sun. 

They are let out, and some of them help with bullets, and some of them help with building. Some of them even help in Dag’s garden, hauling dirt and mulch, digging furrows. And then Furiosa is recovered enough to leave her bed, and the War Boys call for her death. 

Furiosa refuses to speak to them, and they get louder, and she gets quieter still, and then one day she is gone. She takes a bike, and leaves behind smoke and sand, and the new start Cheedo thought they’d been given, goes with her.


	2. Chapter 2

The War Boys are not an army. They are young, most of them, and sick, even the ones who managed to come back. Some of them are disappointed they did not die in the wreckage and flames of pursuit. Even when Capable talks to them, tells them they are their own, their eyes shine back Valhalla. It seems unlikely that this new Citadel will give them the death and glory that crawls under their skin. 

When Furiosa disappears, Cheedo tells the War Boys. It is not an easy revenge to claim, if the woman they hate has already been swallowed by the desert. 

“Don’t follow her,” she tells them, with Capable at her side. “We will close the gates on you if you leave.” 

It feels a bit like locking them in a cage. A bit like what Immortan Joe used to do. And Capable holds her hand tightly, and Cheedo bites her lips to bleeding. She tells herself that it is a lie, a bluff, and when the War Boys stay, she tells herself it is worth it. She can feel all control slipping. They are still the five wives to the people here, they are still untouchable, but that won’t be true forever, and she takes what she can get.

“She’ll come back,” says Capable, a hundred days after she leaves.

“No she won’t,” says Toast, and she spits on the ground, and disappears again. Toast who Cheedo rarely sees anymore, except to sleep. Toast who is talking with Gastown and the Bullet Farm. Toast who turns the salvage from the ravine into a Rig. 

Slowly they lose their five wives names. Dag is called the Green Witch sometimes, and she boils up tinctures, and she soothes night fevers. She crushes mint leaves into her toddling daughter’s palms, and saves the prettiest flowers for her wisps of hair. The Vault grows wild. Capable is called Mother, and she closes her eyes, and smiles, and is every mother that ever was, with babies in her arms. She collects orphans and teaches boys to love something other than war. Toast is not called the Bullet Farmer, but she knows bullets. Her Rig is crewed with those who wouldn’t die for her, but would work beside her, and share her victories. Cheedo is not called anything, but she is not Fragile anymore.

The reservoir is finished, and walls are built, but the Wretched are still the Wretched. They cluster around the base of the Citadel, a little closer than they had when Immortan Joe lived, but most of them are outside the walls still. They take the water, and the rations, but they stare with accusing eyes at Corpus Collosus who lives in the tallest tower, and scouts out storms, and scratches. The Vuvalini stay with the Wretched, saying they’re not made for heights. The Citadel splinters, and splinters, and splinters, and Cheedo holds it together with her teeth.

Tuck speaks with Cheedo sometimes, if there is illness, or dissent. She does the best she can, but she is frightened still, of the sound of her voice, and of the firmness of her hand, and of just how _huge_ it all is. 

“You should see them more,” says Tuck, one day. “They might trust you if you’re visible.” 

So Cheedo goes down to them. She takes medicine from Dag, and blankets from Capable, and guzz from Toast, so the Vuvalini might scout more often on their bikes. They don’t look at her like she is impossible, just like she is improbable, and not to be trusted, and she can’t hold a gaze for more than a second.

“Presents from the princess,” says Spoke, the Vuvalini who had taught Dag medicine before she left, and she doesn’t mean it cruelly, but it stings all the same. 

“I’m sorry,” says Cheedo, the only thing she can come up with. “Furiosa would...”

“Furiosa would what?” says Jedda, laughing. “Furiosa isn’t a ruler, same as your sisters aren’t. You’re better at it, but you’re green still. You’re caught on us and them still.”

“Angharad would...” Cheedo tries desperately.

“We wouldn’t know about her,” says Jedda, voice gentling a little. “It might be you lost your chance for ruling out on the Fury Road, but I think not. You’ve got the stomach for it. You need to bring those high rocks down, it’s not enough to show up making grand gestures.” 

“ _How_ ,” Cheedo snaps, flushed with anger and embarrassment. “I don’t know how to _do_ that.” 

“Make it easier for us to get to you,” says Tuck. “Cut steps into the rock, set the lifts to working, make us know the water isn’t being given to us. It doesn’t belong to anyone.”

Cheedo wants to scream. _Cut steps into the rock_. Like the Citadel isn’t a thousand feet in the clouds. She stills her limbs from stamping out her frustration, something she would have done before, a childish gesture, and a futile one. She steadies her shaking hands, and closes her eyes for just a moment.

“Okay,” she says, because she has done impossible things before. “But I want something from you.” 

“What?” 

“I want you to teach me to ride a bike,” she says, and the Vuvalini smile. 

Furiosa is gone, but Cheedo does not think it will be forever. Rumours trickle back to them of a woman who rides along the horizon. A ghost who helps those who won’t kill her for it. There are other rumours too, that she is not alone. Sometimes children are left near the walls, and Capable takes them in, and they tell her they were found by a woman with eyes like water and a metal hand. 

Cheedo learns to ride the Vuvalinis piecemeal bikes, and she and Toast build a new one from scraps, and then Cheedo has her own. She picks it up faster than she thought she would, running rings into sand, though Jedda and Spoke don’t seem surprised by it. She stays with the Wretched sometimes, under the stars, and she gets calluses on her hands from the handlebars, and from cutting steps into the rock. She breaks three of her fingers one day. She breaks her collarbone in a tumble. But Dag binds her bones tight, and she is back on her bike as quick as she is able. She skirts the borders of the Citadel, baring her teeth in the wind, and the Wretched call her Fierce, sometimes. There is a sidecar she can attach to her bike, for Dag, for when she wants to get out of the Vault and onto the sand. Dag, in goggles that magnify her eyes all the way to the rims of the glass. Dag, with Angharad in her lap. Dag, who holds Cheedo’s heart with green fingers.

There are still parts that are broken. The Citadel is a tall place of water in a world of flat, burnt land, and it attracts violence, and death. The old War Boys die quick, and it is hard to keep them to any path without putting a lock on it. Cheedo stops making threats of keeping them in or locking them out and they settle into something almost civil. The wretched call themselves the People, but they are not whole yet, and for some of them, the shock of being allowed to exist without condition cuts them loose, and they drift away. The Citadel is not what Furiosa promised them when she said _Green Place_ , but it is shelter, and it _is_ green, and Cheedo is as fierce as the desert that took Angharad, and gave them all something new.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Turns out this only has two chapters. oh well! i took the vuvalini names from another fic i wrote. thank you for reading! i'm on tumblr @oneangryshot if you wanna cry about cheedo with me.

**Author's Note:**

> Cheedo is my favourite. Thank you for reading!


End file.
